The Museum of Innocence

by Orhan Pamuk

  I had respectfully (but also with delight) placed my right hand just above her beautiful hip, and with the tips of my first two fingers could feel every movement of her spine, down to the merest flutter, as if taking her pulse. Her curiously erect posture set my head spinning, and for years I would be unable to forget it. There were moments when I could feel in my fingertips the blood coursing through her body, the very life, and then suddenly she would fixate on something new, causing her organs to flinch, a frisson through her elegant frame, and it was all I could do not to embrace her with every bit of my strength.

  As the dance floor became crowded, another couple bumped into us from behind, and for a moment our bodies were pressed together. After that shockingly intimate instant, I remained silent for some time. As I gazed upon her neck and her hair, I was so swept up in the fantasy of happiness with her that I would have gladly abandoned my books and my dreams of becoming a novelist. I was twenty-three years old and quick to anger when the bourgeoisie of Nişantaşı, even my own friends, would laugh at my decision to become a novelist, snidely telling me that no one my age could possibly have enough understanding of life for that. Exactly thirty years later, as I revise these lines, I would now like to add that I believe these people were right. Had I had any understanding of life then, I would have done everything in my power to intrigue her during our dance, I would have believed that she could take an interest in me, and when she slipped out of my arms, I would not have stood there so helplessly watching her go. “I’m tired,” she said. “Would you mind if I sat down after the second dance?” I was walking her back to her table, a courtesy I had learned from films, when I suddenly couldn’t hold myself back.

  “What a boring lot,” I said priggishly. “Shall we go upstairs and find a comfortable place to sit and talk?” It was so noisy that she couldn’t really hear me, but she understood immediately from my expression what I was after. “I have to sit with my mother and father,” she said, as she politely drew away.

  When he realized that I had chosen to end my story there, Kemal Bey congratulated me. “Yes, that would be just like Füsun. You understood her very well!” he said. “I would also like to thank you profusely for resisting the urge to omit those details damaging to your pride. Yes, that is the crux of it, Orhan Bey—pride. With my museum I want to teach not just the Turkish people but all the people of the world to take pride in the lives they live. I’ve traveled all over, and I’ve seen it with my own eyes: While the West takes pride in itself, most of the rest of the world lives in shame. But if the objects that bring us shame are displayed in a museum, they are immediately transformed into possessions in which to take pride.”

  This was the first in a series of didactic pronouncements that Kemal Bey delivered himself of in his small attic chamber as we drank into the night. I was unfazed, mostly because everyone who runs into a novelist in Istanbul feels moved to edifying declarations and suchlike, but (as Kemal Bey so often suggested to me) I, too, was becoming confused about what to include in the book, and how to go about it.

  “Do you know who it was that taught me the central place of pride in a museum, Orhan Bey?” Kemal Bey asked me during another late-night session in the attic. “The museum guards, of course. No matter where I went in the world, the guards would answer my every question with passion and pride. At the Stalin Museum in Gori, Georgia, an elderly woman guard spoke for almost an hour of what a great man Stalin was. And it was thanks to an amiable guard at the Museum of the Romantic Era in the city of Oporto in Portugal, who proudly talked with me at length, that I discovered in Carlo Alberto, the exiled king of Sardinia, who spent the last three months of his life in that building in 1849, a profound influence on Portuguese romanticism. Orhan Bey, if someone asks a question at our museum, the guards must describe the history of the Kemal Basmacı collection, the love I feel for Füsun, and the meanings invested in her possessions, with the same dignified air. Please put this in the book, too. The guards’ job is not, as is commonly thought, to hush noisy visitors, protect the objects on display (though of course everything connected to Füsun must be preserved for eternity!), and issue warnings to kissing couples and people chewing gum; their job is to make visitors feel that they are in a place of worship that, like a mosque, should awaken in them feelings of humility, respect, and reverence. The guards at the Museum of Innocence are to wear velvet business suits the color of dark wood—this being in keeping with the collection’s ambience and also Füsun’s spirit—with light pink shirts and special museum ties embroidered with images of Füsun’s earrings, and, of course, they should leave gum chewers and kissing couples to their own devices. The Museum of Innocence will be forever open to lovers who can’t find another place to kiss in Istanbul.”

  I would sometimes tire of this declamatory style so reminiscent of the more outspoken political writers of the seventies, which Kemal Bey would adopt after two glasses of rakı, that I would stop taking notes, and in the days that followed I would have no wish for his company. But the twists of Füsun’s story, and the singular atmosphere created by the museum’s objects, were such that after a time I would always be drawn back, again want to visit the attic, to listen to this time-worn man deliver long monologues about Füsun, becoming more animated the more he drank.

  “Never forget, Orhan Bey, that the logic of my museum must be that wherever one stands inside it, it should be possible to see the entire collection, all the display cases, and everything else,” Kemal Bey would say. “Because all the objects in my museum—and with them, my entire story—can be seen at the same time from any perspective, visitors will lose all sense of Time. This is the greatest consolation in life. In poetically well built museums, formed from the heart’s compulsions, we are consoled not by finding in them old objects that we love, but by losing all sense of Time. Please write this in the book, too. Let us not conceal the way in which I had you write it, or how you went about your work. When it is done, please give me all the drafts and your notebooks, so that we can display them, too. How much longer will it take? Those who read the book will certainly wish to come here to see locks of Füsun’s hair, her clothes, and her other belongings, just as you have. So please put a map at the end of the novel, so that anyone who cares to can make their way by foot through Istanbul’s streets. Those who know the story of Füsun and me will certainly remember her as they walk those streets and see those prospects, just as I do, each and every day. And let those who have read the book enjoy free admission to the museum when they visit for the first time. This is best accomplished by placing a ticket in every copy. The Museum of Innocence will have a special stamp, and when visitors present their copy of the book, the guard at the door will stamp this ticket before ushering them in.”

  “Where shall we put the ticket?”

  “They should put it here, of course!”

  “Thank you. And at the end, let’s put an index of names, Orhan Bey. It is thanks to your account that I remembered how many people witnessed our story or were otherwise acquainted with it. Even I have a hard time keeping all the names straight.”

  In fact, Kemal Bey did not like my seeking out the people mentioned in the story, but he tolerated my novelist’s ways. Sometimes he was curious to know what the people I’d tracked down had said, or what they were doing now; sometimes he had no interest in them whatsoever, and could scarcely understand my interest in them.

  For example, he could not begin to comprehend why I wrote a letter to Abdülkerim Bey, Satsat’s distributor in Kayseri, or why I met him during one of his visits to Istanbul. As for Abdülkerim Bey, who left Satsat to become the Kayseri distributor for Tekyay, the firm Osman founded with Turgay Bey, he regarded Kemal Bey’s story as the tale of love and disgrace that had brought down Satsat.

  I was able to locate Sühendan Yıldız (also known as Conniving Sühendan), the actress who perennially played the she-devil and who had observed our lovers’ first months at the Pelür. She told me that while she had known Kemal Bey as a desp
erately lonely man, and though like everyone else she’d been well aware of how besotted he was with Füsun, she felt little pity for him, generally disapproving of rich men who prowled the film world for beautiful girls. Sühendan had, in fact, pitied Füsun, “whose impatience to play in films and be a star was something akin to panic.” Had she succeeded, surrounded by all those wolves, she would have come to a sad end anyway, Sühendan supposed, never understanding why Füsun had married “that fatso” (Feridun). As for the grandson for whom she was knitting a tricolor jumper in those days, he was now exactly thirty years old, and whenever he saw on television an old film in which his grandmother had starred, he could barely contain his laughter, but was also shocked to see how poor Istanbul had been in those days.

  Basri the Nişantaşı barber had once been my barber, too. He was still working, and was inclined to speak with love and respect more about Mümtaz Bey than about Kemal Bey. Mümtaz Bey had been an affable, generous, good-hearted man, always ready with a joke. I discovered nothing noteworthy from Basri the barber, or indeed from Hilmi the Bastard and his wife, Neslihan, Hayal Hayati, or Salih Sarılı (another Pelür regular) or Kenan. Ayla, the downstairs neighbor whom Füsun hid from Kemal, now lived in a side street in Beşiktaş with her engineer husband and her four children, the eldest of whom was now at university. She told me that she had valued Füsun’s friendship, and had loved everything about her—her joie de vivre, her wit, the way she spoke—to the point of adopting Füsun as her role model, but sadly Füsun had never reciprocated her desire for close friendship. The two girls would get dressed up and go out together to Beyoğlu, to the cinema. A neighborhood friend who worked as an usher at the Dormen Theater would let them into rehearsals. Afterward they would stop somewhere for a sandwich and an ayran, protecting each other from the men who bothered them. Sometimes they would go into Vakko or some other fashionable shop, pretending to be paying customers, and have great fun trying on clothes, looking at themselves in the mirror. They would be laughing and talking when suddenly Füsun would become fixated on something and all the joy would drain out of her—as it would sometimes in the middle of a film—but she never told Ayla what was bothering her. Everyone in the neighborhood had been aware of Kemal Bey’s comings and goings—they knew he was rich, and not quite right in the head—but no one had said anything about love. Like everyone else in Çukurcuma, Ayla had known nothing about what had happened between Füsun and Kemal in earlier years, and “anyway” she no longer knew anyone in the neighborhood.

  The White Carnation had, in the course of twenty years, risen from gossip columnist to editor of the daily celebrity supplement in one of the country’s leading newspapers. In addition, he edited a monthly gossip magazine focused on the scandals and love affairs of stars in domestic films and television series. Like so many journalists whose false reports had hurt people or even shattered their lives, he had forgotten what he had written about Kemal, asking me to pass on his greetings, along with his deepest respects to his esteemed mother, Vecihe Hanım, whom he had been in the habit of ringing for news now and again, until very recently. Imagining I had approached him about a book I was writing set among film stars and therefore likely to enjoy brisk sales, he was friendly and more than obliging in his offer of help: Did I know that the child resulting from Papatya’s failed marriage with the producer Muzaffer now, though still quite young, owned one of Germany’s leading tourism agencies?

  Feridun had severed all ties with the film world to found a highly successful advertising firm. On hearing that he had called it Blue Rain, I was reminded that he had not abandoned the dreams of his youth, but I dared not ask him anything about his film that had never been made. Feridun shot commercials full of Turkish flags and football matches that advertised great pride in the modest international success of Turkish biscuits, Turkish blue jeans, Turkish razors, and Turkish hoodlums. He had heard about Kemal Bey’s plans for a museum, but it was I who informed him that I was writing a book “telling Füsun’s story”: With extraordinary candor, carefully choosing his words, he told me how he had loved only once in his life, but that Füsun had never paid him any heed, and so he’d been careful not to relive that sorrow by falling in love with her again once they were married, particularly since he knew that Füsun married him only because she’d been “obliged” to do so. I liked his honesty. When I was leaving his stylish office, he asked me with the same cautious courtesy to convey his greetings to “Kemal Bey,” after which he warned me, with a frown: “If you write anything bad about Füsun, Orhan Bey, rest assured that I will come after you.” Then regaining the light and easy manner that suited him so well he asked a favor: Could he use the first sentence of my novel The New Life in a campaign for Bora, a new product from the soft drinks giant that used to make Meltem, with which his firm had longstanding ties?

  With his retirement settlement, Çetin Efendi had bought a taxicab, which he rented to another driver, though sometimes, despite his advanced age, he would take it out himself into the streets of Istanbul. When we met at a taxi stand in Beşiktaş, he told me that Kemal had never changed since boyhood: In essence, he was one who relished every moment of life, ever open to the world and to other people and possessed of a childlike optimism. In this sense, wasn’t it strange, I asked, that his life had fallen prey to such a black passion. But if I had ever met Füsun, Çetin Efendi explained, I would have understood why Kemal Bey had fallen so hard for this woman. They—Füsun and Kemal—were essentially good and innocent souls who suited each other perfectly, but as God had been unwilling to let them be together, we mortals were in no position to question the outcome too closely.

  On our first meeting after his return from a long journey, after Kemal Bey had told me about the museums he had visited, I told him about my conversation with Çetin Efendi, repeating word for word what he had said about Füsun.

  “Visitors to my museum will learn of our story one day, and anyhow, will know in their hearts what sort of person Füsun was, Orhan Bey,” he said. We started drinking at once—by now I truly enjoyed drinking with him. “As they go from display case to display case, and box to box, looking at all these objects, visitors will understand how I gazed at Füsun at suppertime for eight years, and when they see how closely I observed her hand, her arm, the curl in her hair, the way she stubbed out cigarettes, the way she frowned, or smiled, her handkerchiefs, her barrettes, her shoes, and the spoon in her hand” (I did not say, “But Kemal Bey, you failed to mention the earrings.”) “they will know that love is deep attention, deep compassion…. Please finish the book now, and also write that each and every object in the museum must be softly lit from within the display cases in a way that conveys my close and devoted attention. When visitors to our museum view these objects, they should feel respect for my love and compare it with memories of their own. The premises should never be crowded, so that the visitor can examine unhurried each object, and view the pictures of the Istanbul neighborhoods we visited hand in hand, getting a leisurely feel for the entire collection as a totality. In fact I hereby declare that no more than fifty at a time should be admitted to the Museum of Innocence! Groups and school classes must make appointments to visit our museum! In the West museums are getting more and more crowded, Orhan Bey. European families go out together on a Sunday to visit a great museum, just as we used to get into our cars for a Sunday drive down the Bosphorus. And they sit in the museum restaurants and laugh, just as we do in Bosphorus restaurants. Proust wrote of how the furnishings of his aunt’s house were sold to a brothel after her death, and how every time he saw her chairs and tables in this place he felt as if every object was crying. When the Sunday crowds pour through museums, the collected objects cry. In my museum, they won’t be ripped from their own house, at least. I’m afraid that this museum craze in the West has inspired the uncultured and insecure rich of this country to establish ersatz museums of modern art with adjoining restaurants. This despite the fact that we have no culture, no taste, and no talent in the ar
t of painting. What Turks should be viewing in their own museums are not bad imitations of Western art but their own lives. Instead of displaying the Occidentalist fantasies of our rich, our museums should show us our own lives. My museum comprises the life I shared with Füsun, the totality of our experience, and everything I’ve told you is true, Orhan Bey. Perhaps some things will not be clear enough for every reader or visitor, for even though I have told you my story, described my life with utmost sincerity, even I cannot know how much I have understood it as a whole. We can leave that job to future scholars, and the articles they will write for Innocence, the museum magazine. Let them be the ones to establish the structural relations between Füsun’s barrettes and brushes and the deceased canary Lemon. If future generations find the account of our life exaggerated, if they are nonplussed by the pain I suffered in love’s name, or by Füsun’s suffering, or the way we diverted ourselves from all this by looking into each other’s eyes at supper, or found happiness holding hands at the beach and the cinema, the guards must impress upon the incredulous that everything as represented is true. But don’t worry, I don’t doubt that future generations will understand our love. The contented university students who travel here from Kayseri by bus fifty years from now, the Japanese tourists lined up at the door clutching cameras, the single women who end up in the museum having lost their way in the street, and the happy lovers of tomorrow’s happy Istanbul will—upon studying Füsun’s clothes, and the salt shakers, the clocks, the restaurant menus, the old Istanbul photographs, and our shared childhood toys and other objects—find a profound understanding of our love and our lives virtually inescapable. I hope the crowds will also visit our temporary exhibitions, devoted to the ship photographs, soda caps, matchboxes, clothespins, postcards, pictures of stars and celebrities, and earrings gathered together by my obsessive collector cohort, my strange brethren, whose acquaintance I’ve made in their rubbish dens or through their Association. These exhibitions, and the stories behind them, should also in due course have their own catalogs and novels. As visitors admire the objects and honor the memory of Füsun and Kemal, with due reverence, they will understand that, like the tales of Leyla and Mecnun or Hüsn and Aşk, this is not simply a story of lovers, but of the entire realm, that is, of Istanbul. Would you like another rakı, Orhan Bey?”